A Life’s Many Acts Culminate in the Kitchen at NA/NA in Paris

Nathaly Nicolas-Ianniello, a former journalist covering ecological issues, opened NA/NA in the 11th Arrondissement of Paris in 2015.

Owen Franken for The New York Times

By MELISSA CLARK

September 1, 2017

When Nathaly Nicolas-Ianniello opened NA/NA in Paris in 2015, not only was it the first time she had ever worked as a chef, but it was her first job in a restaurant. A daring thing for anyone to do, but she was 52, and many of her friends thought she was nuts.

Like most French chefs, Ms. Nicolas-Ianniello started cooking when she was a child — but not, as the cliché goes, at her grandmother’s elbow amid the vapors of pot au feu.

“I don’t have childhood memories of something smelling good in the cuisine,” she said, using the French word for kitchen. Raised by a single mother in the Parisian suburb Marnes-la-Coquette, Ms. Nicolas-Ianniello grew up in the era of canned foods. Dinner often meant eggs at 9 p.m.

“I taught myself to cook because I had to,” she said.

Good scents were abundant, however, on a recent afternoon in the tiny, L-shaped kitchen of NA/NA, in the 11th Arrondissement, emanating from a dessert on the evening’s menu. There was the buttery, nutty smell of black sesame streusel; the earthy, bittersweet aroma of single-origin chocolate; the saline funk of small-batch sweet miso from Kyoto, Japan.

All would be combined on handmade ceramic plates, just a few shades darker than the black sesame-miso cream on top. The almost savory, panna cotta-like layer is crowned with silky, chocolate ganache and shards of the cocoa streusel. It is a textural delight — soft and creamy, with a crunch varying from sandy to brittle-crisp, and sophisticated flavors that flit from salty to bitter to sweet.

As both the aesthetic and flavors in this dish illustrate, Ms. Nicolas-Ianniello’s cooking is influenced by time spent in Japan, much of it during her former career as a journalist covering ecological issues.

Ecological journalism gave Ms. Nicolas-Ianniello a deeper understanding of the links among food production, sustainability and the environment. Eventually, her interest in those ties grew so overwhelming that she knew it had to become the heart of her work. And it led her, in 2004, to open a cooking school called Esprit Cuisine that focused on organic ingredients.

The flavors in this chocolate ganache with black sesame and miso flit from salty to bitter to sweet.

Although opening NA/NA in her 50s without any restaurant experience was, in a way, terrifying, Ms. Nicolas-Ianniello and her partner Charlotte Demonceau were ready for the challenge.

“At first I thought I didn’t want a restaurant, that I was too old,” Ms. Nicolas-Ianniello said. “But then I thought if we make it a little rock ’n’ roll, and do things our way with intelligence and kindness, we could have something to be proud of.”

Doing things her way means changing the menu twice a day, every day, to be best able to react to the unpredictability of finding seasonal, fair-trade and sustainable ingredients. If the line-caught white tuna from the Basque Country (served perhaps with local haricots vert and a citrus purée), wasn’t available two hours before dinner service, off the menu it went — with or without a replacement.

The formula worked. Within weeks of opening, the 32-seat venue secured its place among a coterie of new, critically acclaimed all-day Paris restaurants — the kind that transition from the homemade granola on sheep milk yogurt for breakfast to beet velouté with yuzu for lunch, to lamb brains with mint, followed by bee pollen meringue, for dinner.

The speed of NA/NA’s success may have seemed surprising. But, for Ms. Nicolas-Ianniello, it was a natural progression in a rich, full life.

“I don’t think I would have been able to do what I did so quickly,” she said, “if I hadn’t done what I’d done before.”